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of
Carrefour
(France’s answer to a Super Walmart)
for more than six months. According to Philips
spokesperson, JonathanWeinert, the company has
a number of projects deployed or in development
for other European customers, though information
on possible US installations is still under wraps.
Unlike Acuity’s BLE-enabled system, Philips’
approach relies entirely on a line-of-sight connec-
tion with a customer’s phone, which could be
particularly effective, as the company now has a
patent pending for its method of encoding the
data transmitted in LED light waves. More than
just providing a vehicle for in-store directions and
promotions, Weinert sees such installations as a
research tool for retailers. Marketing departments
can aggregate anonymous data from hundreds
or thousands of shoppers to create bottom-line
improvements.
“Indoor positioning systems have a dual objec-
tive: to support location-based services on one hand
and to learn about customer behaviour on the other,”
he said. “Anonymous data of special interest to re-
tailers includes customer routing through the store,
dwell times per visit and at specific locations … and
statistics on requests for help fromsales associates”.
Networking in the great outdoors
VLC is less useful in exterior lighting applications
because there’s too much competing, uncontrolled
light in the environment. However, manufacturers
still see tremendous opportunity in working with the
enormous number of roadway and area fixtures in-
stalled across the United States, especially as many
municipalities now are undertaking large-scale LED
upgrade programmes. Building value-added security
and networking capabilities into new products can
mean higher near-term sales and the possibility of
an ongoing income streamprovidingmonitoring and
other services for municipal customers.
In these applications, the fixtures become a
platform – in both a literal and figurative sense – for
mounting cameras and other sensors, along with
communications equipment, to create networks for
surveillance and other security functions, among
other uses. Among the fastest growing sensor op-
tions in this category is gunshot detection. Hubbell
Lighting’s Spaulding Lighting division launched a
version of its Cimarron fixture equipped with an
Internet-protocol (IP) camera and gunshot detection
(in partnership withTOTUS Solutions) in late 2014.
“It really becomes a platform to all our custom-
ers to do what would never have been possible to
do five to 10 years ago,” said Andy Miles, director
of product marketing for Hubbell Lighting’s outdoor
offerings in Greenville, S.C. “It brings a solution in a
single offering that would previously have required
multiple products and vendors”.
LEDs’ controllability provides additional ad-
vantages to security applications, enabling a ca-
pability Hubbell calls ‘active deterrence’. Fixtures
equipped with IP cameras can respond with rapid,
even strobing flashes to drive intruders away and
direct first responders. In addition, IP cameras can
gather visual data that can be analysed to better
understand operational issues, such as people and
vehicle traffic patterns.
This kind of analytics is at the heart of an effort
GE Lighting recently piloted in Jacksonville, Fla.,
and San Diego, dubbed GE’s ‘Intelligent Cities’
initiative. A commercial launch of compatible area
and roadway fixtures, along with cloud-based
intelligence, could be used to enable such future
app-based services as identifying parking-space
availability and traffic monitoring and rerouting.
“City planners today struggle with getting data
on originations and destinations,” said Austin Ashe,
GE’s Intelligent Cities product manager, Cleveland.
“It’s very expensive. This is the kind of data they’ll
be able to get instantly. To be able to calibrate the
speed of every road, block by block, can help cities
become more efficient”.
However, GE isn’t planning to develop all these
capabilities on its own. Instead, the company is
modelling its program on the one used by Apple and
its app-development community. Just as Apple has
flourished as it has evolved from a closed-system
hardware maker into an open-system development
community, Ashe said GE is looking more at ser-
vices and less at individual parts and pieces as it
charts the future for its outdoor lighting offerings.
“Where we want to go, it’s not just about
the sensors in the streetlight,” Ashe said. “It’s
about building an ecosystem of partners we can
leverage”.
This article originally appeared in ELECTRICAL
CONTRACTOR magazine’s April 2016 issue. Reprinted with
permission of ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR, copyright 2016.
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MAY/JUN 2016